Calories burned in "strength" training - clueless, help!

TourThePast

Having decided to eat most if not all of my exercise calories, I'm a bit stuck to know how many I'm burning doing my strength training. Presumably more for lower body than upper body.

Obviously, as I've not worked out for over ten years I'm in pretty pathetic shape for now, and have only been at the gym for a few months. So though I am working my muscles to their limits (with a few exceptions due to a long term but improving knee problem), I'm not actually doing that much "work".

Because of that, the typical quoted figures I see for working out are gong to be pretty irrelevant for me.

I'd love to hear people's ideas about calories burned for the strength part of my workout - it's temporarily public and the 6th and 8th of this month represent my typical upper and lower body sessions.

EDITED TO ADD: For now I'm only doing strength training 3 times a week, I don't want to overdo it, though I do my cardio workout more often.

cdngirl71

You should get yourself a HRM, that will tell you how many calories you are burning when doing strength training.

TourThePast

You should get yourself a HRM, that will tell you how many calories you are burning when doing strength training.

That would be a good idea, I used to have a Polar one, but the batteries eventually gave up, and it wasn't possible to change them. Unfortunately, due to my finances, a replacement won't be happening for a month or two.

Would that give a good indication of calories burned though, for someone who is unfit?

A couple of months back, my heart rate was rocketing to 140 at anything even slightly over a steady walk, now I have alternately jog and walk to get it up that high, and I'm definitely burning WAY more calories than I was a few months ago.

WifeMomDVM

It is difficult to "predict" what one actually burns during strength training - to complicate things after a work-out, your muslces continue to burn calories at a higher rate for about 24 hours after the workout. A phenomenon called "after burn".

In a book I read, "The New Rules of Weight Lifting for Women" by Lou Schuler (there's a men's version of the book also), the author suggests that you eat 300 additional calories on your weight lifting days.

Further more - 3x a week working out for strength is great. Your muscles need time to rest also. It's not advisable to work the same muscle groups 2 days back to back.

I sometimes use a HRM when working out, but find it often overestimates. I just eat 300 calories extra (usually in the form of my recovery shake) on the days I lift weights.

Also - LIFT HEAVY (that advice is for women too!)

Cheers!

JennLifts

The ones here are already pretty low. Its like 150cals/hour. That would probably then be fairly accurate..

TourThePast

The ones here are already pretty low. Its like 150cals/hour. That would probably then be fairly accurate..

Thanks, WifeMomDVM's and your figures are far more than I thought, I've been counting it as 100 calories for the hour.

That's reminded me of another question, I need one minute between each set of reps which means that of a one hour workout, 30 minutes of it is spent resting.

So, do I count that as an hour or only half an hour?

TourThePast

Hopeful BUMP

TourThePast

Money's tight but I bought a heart rate monitor anyway.

It's not like I'm going to be spending money on wine and beer and meals out and chocolate and...

*sobs*